Tom Stoppard and Pink Floyd

For those interested, the play riffs on philosophical thought experiments that have been discussed here at CT, especially the trolley problem.

Unfortunately, it is not very good.

Them there’s fightin’ words, John Quiggin. R&G is wonderful. So is Travesties. Pretty much everything he wrote prior to the mid 90s is almost as good, including his radio plays. I suspect Pink Floyd is liked for the same reason that people usually like music from their adolescent: nostalgia and associations (in PK’s case, especially associations wrt the best weed I ever had).

(1) I want you, Harry, to imagine Nathan Fillion done up as Malcolm Reynolds and Gina Torres as Zoe Washburn, sitting on the bridge of Serenity. Zoe says, “Character flaw?” Mal nods, and says “Character flaw.”

(2) Anyone who thinks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was the one good play Stoppard had in him should try to get to Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, before the season ends to see the Shaw Festival’s production of Arcadia.

Hypothesis: those people who were closely involved with the milieux Stoppard satirises find his plays much more satisfying than those who weren’t. Being an English major probably partly accounts for my love of Travesties and After Magritte; being a professional philosopher helps explain my love for plays like Jumpers. John Quiggin gets the point of the plays, of course, but isn’t grabbed by them in the same way (I don’t take the hypothesis to entail either that he is deficient or that Stoppard is worse for appealing to some people much more than others).

Funny, being a philosopher made me not like Jumpers — the philosophy was too simple-minded. But I loved Travesties and the complex structuring of Arcadia. Those plays had fantastic one-liners, but there hasn’t been the same level of wit in more recent ones like Rock n Roll. As for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, that seems to me now a very dated 1960s piece. It’s middle Stoppard for me.

I was a big Stoppard fan up to Arcadia, but since then…nothing, really. Rock & Roll had some moments–well, there have been moments in lots of things. There were certainly some in The Coast of Utopia, but you had to sit through eight or nine hours to get them, and The Invention of Love was almost embarrasingy over-wrought. Maybe he’s too spread thin. But matching him with an over-wrought rock group, albeit a great one, makes a certain kind of sense.

ducks first seeks cover in the military sense of the word.- Meddle is alright but Obscured by Clouds for Free Four alone tops most Pink Floyd.

I like pink floyd and am only 21 years old and didn’t really listen to music until adolesence. So is this truly nostalgia. Or am I just atypical?

I like pink floyd and am only 21 years old and didn’t really listen to music until adolesence. So is this truly nostalgia. Or am I just atypical?

I liked them when I was 21 too. I loved them when I was 17—and I wasn’t yet born when most of their most famous stuff came out. Maybe it’s not so much nostalgia as musical growing pains.

(Joking of course [mostly]—do know several people in my age cohort, mid-30s, that still like the band.)

I liked Dark Side of the Moon in realtime and I still like it. It holds up. I am not one prone to nostalgia.

Fixed the tag.

Or possibly you just had better musical taste back when you could score killer weed.

Dark Side is the definitive record to hear whilst thrifting. The instrumentals, especially, but even “Money” can sound good in that context. I mean, really, every song including—though in a more perverse way—”Breathe.”

Apart from that use I found it pretty trite after, yes, that musical growing pains period, c. age 14. And subsequently weed has, sadly, made no difference. (Now, on the latter subject the early Floyd is a different matter …)

I don’t know: if you follow the links you see that Showaddywaddy, Television, and The Wombles were all formed in 1973.

I actively disliked Pink Floyd when I was young. Slade too. I quite like PF now, and love Slade.

Inexplicably, the wikipedia list leaves out There goes rhymin’ Simon , which is a classic of American popular music. It also leaves out Closing Time , which is not great Tom Waits but important as a foretaste.

1973 wasn’t a great year in jazz, either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_in_jazz

Headhunters : Herbie throwing talent away. But great fun anyway.

Dark Side is the definitive record to hear whilst thrifting.

Do you mean to say that Dark Side is the thing to listen to when you’re trying to find used clothes (or used records, or used etc.) in quite large and not well very organized stores? Because that is not making any kind of sense to me.

Many years after Dark Side, a friend mailed me apropos of nothing to say “Glad we never got into Radiohead. They are not funky.”

Shortly afterwards I did get into Radiohead. They are not funky, but they make up for it. I still am glad I never got into Coldplay, though. (One album doesn’t count. And it’s my wife’s anyway, not mine.)

So no, Pink Floyd didn’t really swing, but was that because they were (a) plodding earnest bleaters or (b) tormented math-rock visionaries?

Now I think of it, as much as I appreciate some of their work (WYWH in particular), there is a broad streak of Coldplay in the later Floyd – I mean, come on,

Breathe, breathe in the air
Don’t be afraid to care?

And it gets worse. I’ve never owned a copy of Dark Side, and one reason is that I didn’t want the hassle of skipping “Us and them” every time I played it. The lyrics of “Money” aren’t exactly Dylan, either. The album does have some great bits, though.

And then there’s always Procul Harem.